nt."

"When we get at them!" echoed Mrs Stanley, as she approached, leading
Edith by the hand. "Get at them, George! Had any one asked me if it
were possible to pass over these mountains with our canoes and cargoes,
I should have answered, `Decidedly not!'"

"And yet you were so foolish and reckless as to be the first to
volunteer for this decidedly impossible expedition!" replied Stanley.

"There you are inconsistent," said Mrs Stanley, smiling. "If reckless,
I cannot be foolish, according to your own showing; for I have heard you
give it as your opinion that recklessness is one of the most essential
elements in the leaders of a forlorn hope. But really the thing does
seem to my ignorant mind impossible.--What think you, Eda?"

Mrs Stanley bent down and looked into the face of her child, but she
received no reply. The expanded eyes, indeed, spoke volumes; and the
parted lips, on which played a fitful, exulting smile, the heightened
colour, and thick-coming breath, told eloquently of her anticipated
delight in these new regions, which seemed so utterly different from the
shores of the bay: but her tongue was mute.

And well might Mrs Stanley think the passage over these mountains
impossible; for, except to men accustomed to canoe travelling in the
American lakes and rivers, such an attempt would have appeared as
hopeless as the passage of a ship through the ice-locked polar seas in
winter.

Not so thought the men. Already several of the most active of them were
scrambling up the cliffs with heavy loads on their backs; and, while
Stanley and his wife were yet conversing, two of them approached
rapidly, bearing the large canoe on their shoulders. The exclamation
that issued from the foremost of these proved him to be Bryan.

"Now, bad luck to ye, Gaspard! can't ye go stidy? It's mysilf that'll
be down on me blissid nose av ye go staggerin' about in that fashion.
Sure it's Losh, the spalpeen, that would carry the canoe better than
you."

Gaspard made no reply. Bryan staggered on, growling as he went, and in
another minute they were hid from view among the bushes.

"What do you see, Frank?" inquired Stanley; "you stare as earnestly as
Bryan did at the white bear last week. What is't, man? Speak!"

"A fish," replied Frank. "I saw him rise in the pool, and I'm certain
he's a very large one."

"Very likely, Frank; there ought to be a fish of some sort there. I've
been told--hist! there he's again. As